Monday, February 23, 2004

Feminist Author Says Famous Professor Sexually Harassed Her at Yale in 1983 By SCOTT SMALLWOOD Printer friendly E-mail article Subscribe Order reprints HEADLINES   Fewer black students are applying to Ohio State and Michigan since Supreme Court rulings Feminist author says famous professor sexually harassed her at Yale in 1983 Albright College president, who was accused of lying about his credentials, resigns In a magazine article scheduled to be published today, Naomi Wolf, the noted feminist and author of The Beauty Myth, accuses Harold Bloom, a Yale University literary scholar, of "sexually encroaching" on her two decades ago when she was a student at the university. The article, in New York magazine, contends that Yale suffers from a systemic problem of sexual misconduct. Ms. Wolf says Mr. Bloom approached her when she was an undergraduate at Yale, in 1983, and also includes accounts from other female students who experienced harassment there over the past 20 years. She argues that the university's grievance system is ineffectual and fails to curb such behavior. Mr. Bloom declined to comment about the allegation. The 73-year-old professor has written more than 20 books and has taught at Yale since 1955. He is also a professor at New York University. A Yale official said Ms. Wolf had talked to university administrators recently about filing a sexual-harassment complaint against Mr. Bloom, but was told that the university has a two-year statute of limitations on such allegations. In the article, however, Ms. Wolf says she was not seeking to sue the university or file any complaint. Instead, she was hoping to have a conversation with top administrators about the issue, but was repeatedly rebuffed. In a statement released last week, Ms. Wolf said that she had begun talking to Yale about her experience after the university asked her to help raise money. "I felt I had to tell them why I was reluctant to do so," she said. "I then had many conversations with Yale authorities over a period of recent months, telling my story, hoping for an off-the-record meeting to address my concerns about the school's grievance procedures. I got nowhere." Ms. Wolf did not respond to telephone calls on Friday seeking further comment. Details about the article were first reported last week by the New York Observer. According to a pre-publication version of the article obtained by The Chronicle, Ms. Wolf recounts the incident with Mr. Bloom in detail. As an undergraduate and an aspiring poet, she was pursuing independent study with Mr. Bloom in the fall of 1983. But the professor did not meet with her. Eventually, according to Ms. Wolf, he suggested that he come for dinner to a house she shared with two others. Mr. Bloom brought a bottle of sherry, according to the article, and both he and Ms. Wolf drank. After the other dinner guests left, she thought he would discuss a manuscript of her poetry. "I set it between us," she wrote. "He did not open it. He did not look at it. He leaned toward me and put his face inches from mine. 'You have the aura of election upon you,' he breathed." Then the "encroachment" occurred. "The next thing I knew, his heavy, boneless hand was hot on my thigh," she wrote. "I lurched away. 'This is not what I meant,' I stammered. The whole thing had suddenly taken on the quality of a bad horror film. The floor spun. By now my back was against the sink, which was as far away as I could get. He came at me. I turned away from him toward the sink and found myself vomiting, in shock. Bloom disappeared. When he re-emerged -- from the bedroom with his coat -- a moment later, I was still frozen against the sink. He said: 'You are a deeply troubled girl.'" Camille Paglia, a feminist scholar who has criticized Ms. Wolf in the past and was also a student of Mr. Bloom's, said she was outraged by the accusations. "What Naomi Wolf is doing is damaging the cause rather than advancing it," said Ms. Paglia, who is a professor of humanities at the University of the Arts, in Philadelphia. "It makes it seem like a personal vendetta. I fail to see what the rationale could be at this late date of making this allegation. I find it grossly unethical." She said Ms. Wolf and other feminists should take responsibility for their own behavior rather than level charges about decades-old incidents. "Feminists like her are trying to somehow reshape institutions so they are like nurseries, a comfy zone for white, middle-class girls," she said. Ms. Paglia added that she would be interested in seeing evidence of a widespread sexual-misconduct problem at Yale. When she was a graduate student there more than three decades ago, she said, her fellow female graduate students "were having affairs right and left with faculty members." "I never did," she said. "It wasn't my style, but women freely chose. No one felt that they were abused." In the article, Ms. Wolf acknowledges that the incident with Mr. Bloom was minor. "I have obviously survived," she wrote. "This is the argument often made against accusers in sexual-harassment cases: Look, no big deal, you're fine. My career was fine; my soul was not fine. I had an obligation to protect others from which I had run away."