Concern Over HBS’ ‘Mad Men’ Culture

CONVERSATION WITH SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIM ‘GOT OFF TO A ROCKY START’

Professor Francis Frei says “I think we have good people behaving badly”

The Harbus reported that administration officials conceded that discussion with the female student who was the victim of the sexual assault “got off to a rocky start when it responded with ‘surprise’ to the allegations. Citing an article published in Inc. magazine in April 1998 that described male HBS students who “among other infractions… were found to have passed women lewd and sexually explicit notes,” the student was taken aback when the administration reacted with surprise to her report.”

The Inc. story, however, was more than 12 years old and administrators believed that such fraternity house behavior had been a thing of the past. At the time, Harvard disciplined six male MBA students, requiring them to apologize to the HBS community as a condition of graduating. Some of those students also were asked to perform community service and to undergo counseling on sexual harassment, and at least one student was not allowed to walk on graduation day, although he did receive his MBA degree.

So when Frei interviewed the victim of the more recent groping incident, she expressed surprise at the unseemly behavior. “When the student met with us and told us this information, I was very, very surprised, and I believe she found my surprise to be disingenuous,” Frei told The Harbus. “We know things of this nature have happened historically, but we didn’t think it was happening with the students now. Her view was like, ‘Really? This is going on all the time.’”

“Our immediate reaction was we all felt like we were punched in the stomach with this,” Frei added. “And then quite honestly, when [Dean] Nitin brought the section leadership together and broke the news to them, some of them looked like they were punched in the stomach too, while others said, ‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’ I think you saw a very similar reaction among faculty members as well.”

‘I THINK WE HAVE GOOD PEOPLE BEHAVING BADLY’

“We’re devoted to creating the conditions where people can thrive, so when we heard about this incident, it was very jarring,” said Frei in her interview with The Harbus. “That said, I don’t think there is anything going on this year that wasn’t going on last year or going on the year before that, and I don’t think there are bad people here either; I think we have good people behaving badly. We want to learn if there’s something in the culture here that’s making those good people behave badly.”

“The issue is larger than any one incident,” said Frei. “Now that it’s been surfaced, our belief is that talking about these issues is going to greatly reduce the likelihood of anything like this happening again.”

The Harbus reported that Frei described Thursday’s sessions as “the beginning of the journey.” Harvard plans to openly discuss issues of sexual assault and harassment at the beginning of next year’s required curriculum, rather than at the end.

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