Some time ago on this blog I confessed to a “crime:” namely that, for over thirty-five years now, I have been living with a woman with whom I had an affair while I was still her teacher and she, my student.
Today I want to confess to another “crime.”
This happened about twenty years ago, shortly after I had returned from a year I spent abroad on a sabbatical. I was talking over the phone to a former student of mine, let’s call him X, who had since become a colleague. Suddenly, out of the blue, I heard him say: “Did you know there was a complaint concerning sexual harassment against you?”
“No,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
“He: Do you remember this Colombian student you had?”
“I do” I said. She had been in my class two years earlier. Rumor had it that she was the daughter of some billionaire who had made his money in all kinds of interesting ways. But that was something I only learned after the class had ended.
“Well,” he said, “she launched a complaint. She said you made a pass at her, but she had refused. So you gave her bad grades.” She had, in fact, written three papers, each of which was worse than the last.
“So what did you do?” I asked. At the time, he was in charge of the Hebrew University’s School of Overseas Students where I taught.
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“Very simple,” he answered. “I asked her to let me have the papers in question. I took them, removed both your names, and handed them to a colleague of ours who is an expert on the topic. Having read them, he concluded that the grades you gave her were perfectly OK. Whereupon the matter was closed.”
Now, consider how lucky I was:
First, in that she still had the papers and, instead of hiding them, handed them over.
Second, in that I made a point of always writing down extensive comments on every paper by every student so as to let them know why I had given them the grades I did.
Third, in that X was X. Someone else might have said: “OK, so there is nothing wrong with the grades. But this still does not prove that no sexual harassment took place. Let’s launch an investigation.” Of the kind in which, as we all know, a man is practically certain to be found guilty. And which will taint him forever even if he is acquitted.
Fourth, in that she left the country, which limited the damage she could do me.
So, to let me off the hook, no fewer than four separate strokes of luck were needed. Looking back, I’d put my chances of emerging unscathed at 1 in 104. Others have not been so fortunate.
Just for the record: I only knew she was Colombian because, as I asked everyone for their country of origin at the beginning of the course, she had said so. That apart, I do not recall ever having exchanged a single word with her, either in- or out of class.