Comaroff, and All He Represents

By Will Sutton, Organizer

When I arrived at last week’s walkout of John Comaroff’s class, I’ll admit I was surprised at our turnout. During a zoom meeting to organize the action a few days before, we had set a goal of getting 15 people in the room to walk out. On Tuesday, there were over 100. 

I believe my peers and I were motivated primarily by dismay that Harvard would allow a man credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault to hold power in our community. We want Comaroff to resign, we want Harvard to take accountability for its complicity– we want some semblance of justice, albeit shamefully belated, for the many survivors of his abuse. First and foremost, the walkout and further action is about Harvard’s decision to ignore decades of evidence of Comaroff’s misconduct, and to protest his continued presence here on campus.

But for myself– and, I suspect, many others– there is more to our anger. Harvard’s protection of John Comaroff is sickening, but it is also painfully familiar. Sexual violence, whether it’s from a powerful professor or a peer, is extremely prevalent at this university; survivors finding justice, healing and safety is extremely rare. When I hear about Comaroff’s behavior, when I hear about Harvard’s complicity, I recognize the stories of my friends and peers. When I felt the righteous anger of the group marching out of his classroom and across campus, I felt also the anger that I harbor daily towards the individuals who have harmed so many of my friends, and towards the university that has failed to prevent that harm and neglected to respond appropriately. 

I suspect I am not the only one who feels this. I suspect that many students who walked out– and many more students beyond that– see in the story of John Comaroff disturbing resonance with their own experiences here, or those of someone they know and care for. I believe that our community is hurting, more than the Harvard administration knows, and more than many of us have admitted. 

To be clear, nobody is simply projecting anger from our past experiences onto Comaroff. The lawsuit alone gives us reason to be furious at Comaroff himself and Harvard’s processes. But I feel compelled to remind Harvard that their wrongdoing did not start with Comaroff, and it will not end when he resigns. I know, we know, that there are many other Comaroffs among us. Harvard must invest in bold, transformative, top-down change– informed by the voices of survivors and survivor-advocates who have long offered proposals and labor to make this campus a safer and more just place.